Recently there has been a surge of comment spam on public Jira instances. Spammers are registering themselves as Jira users, in order to spam issues.
Atlassian is evaluating solutions to this problem. In the meantime, we have written up a JSP that can be deployed in an existing Jira instance (versions 3.3 – 3.6.5), that will help manage the problem by allowing you to easily identify and delete spam comments.
To obtain the JSP and for instructions on how to use it, please see:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRASPAM/Deleting+Jira+comment+spam
We are also interested in your feedback. If your public Jira instance has been spammed, please let us know (by adding comments to the page mentioned above). We’re particularly interested in any patterns of spamming you observe (eg. long lists of URLs is currently the norm), so we can devise appropriate countermeasures. Your suggestions for solutions (captchas? comment moderation queues?) are also appreciated.
Cheers,
Anton